Your Mission...

You received a new computer system for your birthday! Or maybe you arrived Monday morning at the computer lab to find your computer station was disconnected over the weekend, either for maintenance purposes or maybe just to mess with your head. How can you get set up in time to check your email before you get down to work?

What connects to what? If you are already a pro at this, just play along for a bit.

Connecting External Computer Components

You are looking at the backside of a typical desktop computer case, in this case, a tower. Most of the ports are back here, although there may be a couple of USB ports or connectors for headsets or speakers in the front. Find and click on one of the four USB ports in the image for more information.

The Universal Serial Bus (USB) is a common bus used for connecting things such as mp3 players, flash drives, and digital cameras. It is becoming more common for devices to use USB ports, including mice, printers and scanners. If you have more USB devices than ports, you will need to add a USB hub. This device will let you plug in multiple devices through a single USB port.

Busses are the pathways to, from and within a computer for transferring information.

Plug in your USB devices. If you know what those are, that should be easy.

As for the rest of the devices, you can probably make do by simply by matching colours of ends to ports, or examining the number of pins. Don't force anything!

You sit down, power up, and glance up at the whiteboard to see the morning assignment. It reads:

Identify the following and describe what they connect:

• serial port
• parallel port
• SCSI port
• USB port
• video card
• sound card
• network card
• modem
• FireWire

No time to check email, but it looks like you have a good chance of finishing early, since you have already started on the USB devices.

ASSIGNMENT: Search online for a brief description of each (distinguishing characteristics and examples of what they typically connect to). Put the information in a table.

Include the url addresses of web resources used. You may want to include an image of each item for reference as well.

Search Suggestion: Use Google "define" feature by typing define: +search term. For example, define: "serial port"

Search Suggestion: Use Google "image" search to find images that are similar what you find on your computer.

QUESTION: How are the cables connecting internal SCSI device different in shape from the cables connecting external SCSI devices. Be able to identify the internal SCSI cord inside your computer by its appearance.

BONUS: List one or more other cards, ports or cables you can find information on, how they are distinguished from others, and what they connect to. Include the url address of the site(s) the information came from.

Application Project: Take system apart, write instructions, and reassemble

Apply your knowledge of ports, cards and cables.

Be able to make connections with:

• monitor
• keyboard
• mouse
• speakers
• printer
• scanner
• digital camera
• video camera
• network hub or router

Assignment

Create an illustrated guide to connecting selected devices to the computer. Make sure images are clear and in focus, and are correctly labelled.